A Gimme For The Plaintiffs

Scott Walker has returned to the scene of the crime.

Walker has returned to the Milwaukee County Courthouse to serve jury duty.  He was originally supposed to have served six months ago, but that was postponed when the courthouse caught on fire thanks to deferred maintenance by himself and his successor, Chris Abele.

But just as it was in the eight years Walker was county executive, he is unable to step foot in the courthouse without mucking things up.

He was picked for two jury pools.

The first one was for a murder trial.  Walker was not picked to serve on that jury.

The second was for a civil law suit regarding a personal injury.  Walker was picked for this jury, but it didn't take him long before he created another miscarriage of justice by being found out that he received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the CEO of the insurance agency being sued:

Gov. Scott Walker remained on a jury in a personal injury civil trial Tuesday, despite having received campaign donations from an executive of an insurance company that is a defendant in the case.

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Kevin Martens noted someone had disclosed to him that the governor had received donations from a Secura executive. The judge made his remarks before jurors were brought into the courtroom.

Walker received $2,000 in donations from Secura CEO John Bykowski from 2009 to 2011, according to a campaign finance database maintained by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. The five Bykowski donations to Walker all were made while Bykowski was a Secura executive.

Fellow progressives jumped on this, assuming the worst, in that Walker would automatically side with the defendant. That is, by the way, a very reasonable assumption, given Walker's track record.

However, looking at the big picture, it's an automatic gimme to the plaintiffs.

Best case scenario, the jury finds in their favor and they get the money they were seeking.

But if the jury would decide against them, they have an automatic reason for calling a mistrial. This is especially true considering this issue was not brought up during the jury selection process.

Now, if the plaintiffs happened to have signed a recall petition, well, that's a whole other story.

And for the record, I do not have any confirmation that he visited his old office suite, reminiscing about things like where the secret router was hidden.

But I did hear that Walker and Abele, did compare notes on the most effective ways to bust unions and destroy the democratic process.

Walkergate: Russell Goes For Broke

On August 16, Tim Russell last appeared in front of the Honorable David Hansher.

At that hearing, we learned that Parker c. Mathers, Russell's fifth attorney, was appointed to him through the Public Defender's office. I opined at the time that this meant that Russell was broke. I further pointed out that not only was Russell facing some serious time if convicted on the current embezzlement charges, but that he was also under investigation for other aspects of Walkergate, including misconduct in public office, à la Kelly Rindfleisch.

It appears that I was wrong, after all, and that Russell is going for broke on fighting the charges.

If the gentle reader will recall, Russell's previous attorney, Dennis Krueger, was playing a lot of games and trying the patience of both Judge Hansher and of the prosecutor, Bruce Landgraf. Krueger pushed things so far that Landgraf had taken the possibility of a plea bargain off the table.

At the hearing three weeks ago, Judge Hansher made it perfectly clear that he was tired of all of Russell's game-playing and stall tactics:

This fact is even recognized by the Honorable David Hansher, the judge presiding over the case, who allowed for this window as well as gave Attorney Mathers some hard advise:

Hansher said Thursday Mathers would have until Aug. 31 to seek to file any new motions in the case. Hansher warned Mathers that there had already been “tons of motions filed, some by (Russell’s) previous counsel that I considered frivolous.”

Hansher told lawyers in Russell’s case they should present any potential plea deal by Nov. 2. Russell’s trial is scheduled to start Dec. 3.

With Judge Hansher getting tired of all the delays in this case, and rightfully so, and a public defender who is a good but pragmatic lawyer, there is a good shot that Russell will be settling for a plea bargain much like Darlene Wink did.

If Russell has any sense of self-preservation and self-respect left, that is exactly what he will do.

Russell and Mathers apparently chose to ignore the Court's directives on both the frivolous motions and the deadlines.

Per court records, Mathers finally filed his motions on Tuesday, September 4, well after the deadline imposed by the Court.

And boy, his motions sure are doozies.

Mathers filed a motion to file a motion to have the district attorney disqualified, to have the charges dismissed and for an "information instanter," which is just an order for the requested information to be produced in a timely fashion.

Unless Mathers has a very compelling reason for asking the DA to be disqualified and all charges to be dropped, I don't believe that Judge Hansher is going to look to kindly on this stunt.

Most likely, Mathers is taking a page from the right wing's attempts to discredit the DA's office and the investigation. The utterly misnamed Citizens for a Responsible Government, who has yet to say a peep about any of Scott Walker's misdeeds, had teamed up with the ambulance chaser, Paul Bucher, to teach people how to undermine justice. The Koch News Network has been conflating every little thing they can to make the investigation to look bad. They've even have gone so far as to stalk staff members of the DA's office. Yet they've never have been able to offer any solid proof, but still throw about their innuendo and false inferences.

Their most recent focus has been on the John Doe case of former Milwaukee County Supervisor Johnny Thomas, who was found not guilty of taking bribes. Even the "serious reporter" John Mercure of WTMJ squawk radio interviewed Thomas and asked all sorts of leading questions, trying to get Thomas to lambaste the DA's office. By the way, Thomas had more class than that and wouldn't give them the soundbite they were hoping for.

Yet they have never once even tried to argue that Russell, Rindfleisch, or even Walker himself is innocent.

The three amigos: Tim Russell, Scott Walker
and Brian Pierick

In sum, the Walkerites are running scared and apparently have reason to believe that indictments are coming soon. In order to get a jump start on this, they have gone on the offensive, injecting smear, innuendo and outright lies to give themselves talking points when Walker is eventually charged. Fortunately, Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm runs a tight ship and has given nothing, not one damn thing, for the squawkers and the propagandists to harp on.

And as noted above, despite their squawking, their propaganda and their shouts into the echo chamber, there has not been one claim of innocence. This is because like you, gentle reader, they know full well that when it comes to Walker and his crew of thugs, there's more. There's always more.

But given that Russell apparently doesn't know when to hold them and when to fold them, we know what we must do: